This invention relates in general to computer software, and in particular to a method and system by which application developers can utilize machine translation to seamlessly extend the search indexing of a directory service to be multi-lingual.
Internet, also referred to as an xe2x80x9cinternetwork,xe2x80x9d is a set of computer networks, possibly dissimilar, joined together by means of gateways that handle data transfer and the conversion of messages from the sending network to the protocols used by the receiving network (with packets if necessary). When capitalized, the term xe2x80x9cInternetxe2x80x9d refers to the collection of networks and gateways that use the TCP/IP suite of protocols.
The Internet has become a cultural fixture as a source of both information and entertainment. Many businesses are creating Internet sites as an integral part of their marketing efforts, informing consumers of the products or services offered by the business or providing other information seeking to engender brand loyalty. Many federal, state, and local government agencies are also employing Internet sites for informational purposes, particularly agencies which must interact with virtually all segments of society such as the Internal Revenue Service and secretaries of state. Providing informational guides and/or searchable databases of on-line public records may reduce operating costs. Of increasing importance is the use of the Internet and commercial transactions. Increasing amounts of commerce occur on the Internet. Entire businesses exist only on the Internet to sell goods and services to consumers. Other businesses are establishing a presence on the Internet to reach new consumers.
Currently, the most commonly employed method of transferring data over the Internet is to employ the World Wide Web environment, also called simply xe2x80x9cThe Web.xe2x80x9d Other Internet resources exist for transferring information, such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Gopher, but have not achieved the popularity of the Web. In the Web environment, servers and clients affect data transaction using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a known protocol for handling the transfer of various data files (e.g., text, still graphic images, audio, motion video, etc.). Information is formatted for presentation to users by standard page description language, the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In addition to basic presentation formatting, HTML allows developers to specify xe2x80x9clinksxe2x80x9d to other web resources identified by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). The URL is a special syntax identifier defining a communications path to specific information. Each logical block of information accessible to a client, called a xe2x80x9cpagexe2x80x9d or a xe2x80x9cWeb page,xe2x80x9d is identified by a URL. The URL provides a universal, consistent method for finding and accessing this information, not necessarily for the user, but mostly for the user""s Web xe2x80x9cbrowser.xe2x80x9d A browser is a program capable of submitting a request for information identified by a URL at the client machine. Retrieval of information on the Web is generally accomplished with an HTML compatible browser. The Internet also is widely used to transfer applications to users using browsers.
Users exploring the Web are also able to access various services, including directory services and name services. Directory services are distinguished from name services by their ability to search and retrieve named information. LDAP is a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol produced by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). LDAP provides searching capabilities with a well defined description format for delineated access to directory information via an API or URL. The term LDAP refers to both a protocol and an API for accessing directory services. The protocol defines how directory information is stored in key/value pairs and has defined some standard keys (referred to as attributes) for accessing information and for searching across the directory database. To find an LDAP entry the user must specify the distinguished name (DN) which is simply a set of Relative Distinguished Names (RDN).
An RDN component is a set of attribute-value pairs. The prior art assumes monolingual entries but has provision for multi-lingual access through RFC 2596 in which the database is primed with alternate search keys for each language. The present invention enables multi-lingual access through an automation process without any modification of the LDAP database which increases the size of the database and effects the scaleability of searching by adding alternate entries, as in the prior art.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide an automation process for using a machine translation function to make an LDAP directory service accessible to multi-lingual queries.
Another object of the invention is to provide a seamless model to facilitate multi-lingual access to an LDAP directory via a URL.
A third object of the invention is to provide multi-lingual accessibility without the need to add additional multi-lingual entries to the LDAP directory.
These and other features, aspects, and advantages of the present invention will become better understood with reference to the following description, appended claims, and accompanying drawings.